Obama's Force Authorization is a Blank Check for War Worldwide

Peace Through War - Freda Art

By Ron Paul

The president is requesting Congress to pass an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) resolution against ISIS. Congress has not issued a similar resolution since 2002, when President Bush was given the authority to wage war against Iraq. The purpose of this resolution is to give official authority to the president to do the things that he has already been doing for the past six years. Seems strange but this is typical for Washington. President Obama’s claim is that he does not need this authority. He claims, as have all other recent presidents, that the authority to wage war in the Middle East has been granted by the resolutions passed in 2001, 2002, and by article II of the Constitution. To ask for this authority at this time is a response to public and political pressure.

It has been reported that the president is going to request that the authority limit the use of ground troops. However it would not affect the troops already engaged in Syria and Iraq to the tune of many thousands. This new authority will acknowledge that more advisors will be sent. Most importantly it will appear to have given moral sanction to the wars that have already been going for years.

Interestingly it actually expands the ability of the president to wage war although the president publicly indicates he would like to restrain it. The new authorization explicitly does not impose geographic limits on the use of troops anywhere in the world and expands the definition of ISIS to that of all “associated forces.” A grant of this authority will do nothing to limit our dangerous involvement in these constant Middle East wars.

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Russell Brand's Brilliant Response to Obama's New War

Russell Brand

Russell Brand The Trews (E146) -- Reaction to President Barack Obama's 'destroy and degrade' strategy address for fighting the Islamic State.

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US Suspends Constitution in Permanent World War on Terror

Dees Illustration

Eric Blair

Two disturbing developments have occurred in the last couple of days that have gone relatively unnoticed compared to the recent IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals. 

First, the senate is debating an expansion of the already broad powers of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) so the U.S. can essentially engage any area in the world in the war on terror, including America. Which brings us to the second development: the Pentagon has recently granted itself police powers on American soil.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehan told Congress yesterday that the AUMF authorized the US military to operate on a worldwide battlefield from Boston to Pakistan.  Sheehan emphasized that the Administration is authorized to put boots on the ground wherever the enemy chooses to base themselves, essentially ignoring the declaration of war clause in the US Constitution.

British Sheep Talk to We Are Change (Video)

We Are Change

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“After you Brother!” Qadaffi stays and Obama leaves?

Dees Illustration

Franklin Lamb LLM, PhD
Activist Post

Tripoli, Libya -- The 6/27/11 International Criminal Courts (ICC) arrest warrants issued for Muammar Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, and Libya intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanoussi, however pleasing to the “rebels” and NATO, probably won’t have much effect on negotiating a settlement between the two camps and certainly the warrants will not facilitate a voluntary regime change. Quite likely, the warrants effects will tend toward the obverse, with the Libyan government ignoring, but ridiculing the much criticized ICC and pointing out its historical pattern of targeting African leaders. At Tripoli’s Rixos Nasser Hotel, just a few hours after the arrest warrants were announced, Libya’s Justice Minister and a high ranking Foreign Affairs official did just that and then refused to take any questions from the large gathering of western journalists of whom Libya is distrustful of, given a spate of recent false main stream media reports that have been exposed as hoaxes.

Colonel Qaddafi and his supporters, in a series of what this observer refers to as “Hezbollah style free give and take dialogue sessions” are making it very plain that they will prevail in re-unifying Libya and probably before Ramadan which begins, this year, in early August. They argue that the “rebels” are increasingly fighting among themselves and are losing popular support. It’s an argument similar to the one the “rebels” are using to explain how their victory is all but assured, also by the end of Ramadan.

Bill would approve US role in Libya retroactively

US Senator John Kerry
© AFP/File Aamir Qureshi

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two top US senators on Tuesday introduced a bill that would retroactively support America's military role in Libya, amid a raging debate over whether President Barack Obama flouted the law by not getting prior congressional approval.

"I believe we will find a strong, bipartisan majority that is in favor of authorizing our current military operations in Libya and seeing this mission through to success," said Republican US Senator John McCain, one of the authors of the bill.

"That is a message that (Libyan President Moamer) Kadhafi needs to hear. It is a message that Khadafi's opponents, fighting to liberate their nation, need to hear," McCain told his fellow senators during floor debate in the Senate, as he urged a vote on the measure "as soon as possible."

A Firestorm On The Eastern Horizon

Dees Illustration

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market

The Middle East is and always has been an incredible waste of time, energy, capital, and of course, human lives. Every civilization that has attempted to tame and corral the region has met with resounding frustration and defeat. Every empire that moves to extend its borders around its existing cultures has withered under the strain of constant war and revolution. Long before petroleum became a sought after commodity and long after its free flow was established, the Middle East has been used as a fulcrum point for turning nations and worlds inside out. One might begin to wonder where the West’s mindless obsession with the place actually comes from...

From crusades for the holy land, to crusades for oil, to crusades for “WMD’s” and the “downtrodden masses”; we have been regaled for centuries by governments and elitists with elaborate rationalizations for indefinite war within the cradle of civilization. Our government in particular has seen fit to topple dictatorships, install new dictatorships, embroil our troops in the quagmire of nation building, instigate social instability and civil unrest, fund terrorist organizations, elevate madmen, and then brandish them like weapons to frighten the American public into relinquishing their civil liberties. Every decade, and every new layer of conflict, brings the U.S. closer to the breaking point, and closer to bankruptcy.

Eisenhower's worst fears came true. We invent enemies to buy the bombs

Britain faces no serious threat, yet keeps waging war. While big defence exists, glory-hungry politicians will use it

War Mind
 Anthony Freda Illustration

Simon Jenkins
Telegraph

Why do we still go to war? We seem unable to stop. We find any excuse for this post-imperial fidget and yet we keep getting trapped. Germans do not do it, or Spanish or Swedes. Britain's borders and British people have not been under serious threat for a generation. Yet time and again our leaders crave battle. Why?

Last week we got a glimpse of an answer and it was not nice. The outgoing US defence secretary, Robert Gates, berated Europe's "failure of political will" in not maintaining defence spending. He said Nato had declined into a "two-tier alliance" between those willing to wage war and those "who specialise in 'soft' humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and talking tasks". Peace, he implied, is for wimps. Real men buy bombs, and drop them.

This call was echoed by Nato's chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who pointed out how unfair it was that US defence investment represented 75% of the Nato defence expenditure, where once it was only half. Having been forced to extend his war on Libya by another three months, Rasmussen wanted to see Europe's governments come up with more money, and no nonsense about recession. Defence to him is measured not in security but in spending.

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Laws, the War On Drugs, Police Brutality, and Efforts to Control the Internet, Are Essential to the State

Whenever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator state, since it is based on the greatest accumulation of depotentiated social units. ~ Carl Jung

Butler Shaffer
Lew Rockwell

The title of this article encompasses topics that arouse attention and criticism among persons of libertarian persuasion. The discussion of such matters usually treats each issue as though it were sui generis, independent of one another. Most of us respond as though the woman who is groped at the airport has no connection with the man who is tasered by a police officer; that the person serving time in prison for selling marijuana is unrelated to the men being held at Guantanamo. The belief that one person’s maltreatment is isolated from the rest of us, is essential to the maintenance of state power.

What we have in common is the need to protect one another’s inviolability from governmental force. When we understand that the woman being groped by a TSA agent stands in the same shoes as our wife, mother, or grandmother; when the man being beaten by a sadist cop is seen, by us, as our father or grandfather, we become less willing to evade the nature of the wrongdoing by invoking the coward’s plea: "better him than me." The state owes its very existence to the success it has had in fostering division among us, a topic I explored in my Calculated Chaos book. Divide-and-conquer has long been the mainstay in political strategy. If blacks and whites; or Christians and Muslims; or employees and employers; or "straights" and "gays"; or men and women; or any of seemingly endless abstractions, learn to identify and separate themselves from one another, the state has established its base of power. From such mutually-exclusive categories do we draw the endless "enemies" (e.g., communists, drug-dealers, terrorists, tobacco companies) we are to fear, and against whom the state promises its protection. By becoming fearful, we become existentially disabled, and readily accept whatever safeguards the institutional fear-mongers impose, . . . all for our "benefit," of course!

Hip-Hop Star Lupe Fiasco calls Obama/US "The Biggest Terrorist" (Video)

Activist Post

CBS interviewed hip-hop star and activist, Lupe Fiasco, where he called Obama and the U.S. government the "biggest terrorist.":

"In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama, and the United States of America...I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism. You know, the root cause of terrorism is the stuff that the U.S. government allows to happen, and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it's easy for us because it's just some oil." -- Lupe Fiasco

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Geneva Conventions Redefined: The New U.S. Department of War

"What's in a name?"-- William Shakespeare

Perpetual war continues abroad and domestically
Dees Illustration

Lt. Eric N. Shine and Gary Corseri
Activist Post

Most people are unaware of the larger picture developing over the past seven or eight decades, or have been willing to ignore it. This still-developing image portrays matters requiring knowledge of world history, a degree of self-education and a global perspective to recognize and decipher.

The remarkable change still underway is a complete militarization of the United States, if not also the rest of the world. Today, the most disturbing sign of this take-over of all of the civilian commons by the military, at least in the U.S., comes in the form of a new, or reinvigorated, Department of War.

Our de facto Department of War, was known as our War Department from 1789 until it was reconstituted on September 18, 1947 in response to international terms set forth by the Geneva Convention accords. Wars of aggression and conquest were outlawed by those international agreements. Only wars to defend a nation’s borders were allowed. In 1948, with our agreeing to the terms of these accords, our Department of War was converted to a reconfigured Department of Defense and its focus changed… until now.

GOING ROGUE: NATO War Crimes in Libya

Susan Lindauer, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

It's a story CNN won't report. Late at night there's a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point. Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels—or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women's throats.

Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. Joanna Moriarty, who's part of a global fact-finding delegation visiting Tripoli this week, also reports that NATO rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot.  If families say they want to stay out of the fighting, NATO rebels take a different approach to scare other families. The doors of "neutral homes" are welded shut, Moriarty says, trapping families inside. In Libyan homes, windows are typically barred. So when the doors to a family compound get welded shut, Libyans are entombed in their own houses, where NATO forces can be sure large families will slowly starve to death.

How the empire will prevail: Will Washington Foment War Between China and India?

India-China Proxy War in the Works?
Wikimedia Image

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars

What is Washington’s solution for the rising power of China?

The answer might be to involve China in a nuclear war with India.

The staging of the fake death of bin Laden in a commando raid that violated Pakistan’s sovereignty was sold to President Obama by the military/security complex as a way to boost Obama’s standing in the polls.

The raid succeeded in raising Obama’s approval ratings. But its real purpose was to target Pakistan and to show Pakistan that the US was contemplating invading Pakistan in order to make Pakistan pay for allegedly hiding bin Laden next door to Pakistan’s military academy. The neocon, and increasingly the US military position, is that the Taliban can’t be conquered unless NATO widens the war theater to Pakistan, where the Taliban allegedly has sanctuaries protected by the Pakistan government, which takes American money but doesn’t do Washington’s bidding.

Down with the Dictator

Dees Illustration

Llewellyn Rockwell Jr.
Lew Rockwell

Governments and their intellectual front men believe that nothing unites a population like a war. Actually, that’s not quite true. What happens is that during war, governments strike fear into their domestic opponents and silence them through intimidation. The appearance of unity is wholly illusory.

If you truly want to unite a population, here is a key: drive the dictator out of the country. The fleeing of a despot always leads to unparalleled and authentic celebration because the people perceive a new-found freedom. In the street celebrations, dancing, enthusiasm, and optimism, we gain a glimpse of what freedom is all about. It is about removing the boot from the neck.

The Heavy Cost of the Bush-Obama Murder Rampage

Dees Illustration

Anthony Gregory
Lew Rockwell

In every election cycle, the politicians love to pretend there is a difference among them on the foreign policy questions. Yet on these issues of unsurpassed importance, we see the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same bloodthirsty gang.

On the superficial level of presidential politics, Obama and Bush appeared light-years apart. They play opposites in the DC-approved official culture war between those who pretend to be genuine red-blooded Americans of the heartland and those who feign an understanding of the beleaguered urban minorities and oppressed underclass, when in truth both perfectly embody the same Wall Street-Pentagon-friendly power elite. This is most clearly seen in their virtually identical approach toward empire.

House Passes Authority for Worldwide War

Sam Milgrom
ACLU

The House just passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including a provision to authorize worldwide war, which has no expiration date and will allow this president — and any future president — to go to war anywhere in the world, at any time, without further congressional authorization. The new authorization wouldn’t even require the president to show any threat to the national security of the United States. The American military could become the world’s cop, and could be sent into harm’s way almost anywhere and everywhere around the globe.

Before the vote, the House debated an amendment that would have struck the worldwide war provision. That amendment was introduced by a bipartisan group of representatives: Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Given the enormity of the proposed law, you’d expect the House to debate the amendment to strike it extensively, but that’s not what happened. The amendment was debated for a total of 20 minutes. That’s right. Twenty minutes to debate whether Congress should hand the executive branch sweeping worldwide war authority.

US lawmakers pass $690 billion Pentagon bill

The US House of Representatives passed a
$690 billion Pentagon budget Thursday
© AFP/DOD/File

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives passed a $690 billion Pentagon budget Thursday that bars American ground forces in Libya and limits the Obama administration's powers on handling Guantanamo detainees.

Lawmakers voted 322-96 in favor of the budget plan which met the Defense Department's request for $119 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also placed restrictions on President Barack Obama's authority to reduce the US nuclear weapons stockpile under the new START treaty with Russia, prompting a White House veto threat earlier this week.

NATO's Feast of Blood

A Dispatch from Tripoli

Cynthia McKinney reports
from Libya
Wikimedia Image

Cynthia McKinney
Counterpunch

While serving on the House International Relations Committee from 1993 to 2003, it became clear to me that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was an anachronism. Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States in response to the Soviet Union’s survival as a Communist state. NATO was the U.S. insurance policy that capitalist ownership and domination of European, Asian, and African economies would continue. This also would ensure the survival of the then-extant global apartheid.

NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet Response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a “cordon sanitaire” around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the “Cold War.”

Republicans in Congress to Crown Obama King

Anthony Freda Illustration

David Swanson
Global Research

In what will come as a shock to the Tea Party and yet probably not rival the recent royal wedding in London for viewership, Republican Congressman Buck McKeon and Republican Senator John McCain plan to crown President Barack Obama King of America. They’re not kidding, and this is no stunt.

Here’s what noted Republican Abraham Lincoln once wrote on the subject:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don’t.' The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.'